Why Risen 2 is shit?

[Supermedo]

So I was doing PB marathon from Gothic 1 to 3 and hopefully Risen 1 to 3.

I had blast replaying Risen and I didn't know what to expect from Risen 2 until I played MotherFucking Risen 2.

first I knew it will not be like previous PB games but holyshit is like they got everything that make PB game good and shat on it.

At first it was small disappointment, I was prepared for it thing like how the game environment design revolved around corridors or how the melee combat is shit which is to be expected from PB games, the nearest thing they got to a good melee combat was in the first Risen.

It all came tumbling down when I decided to side with the natives because in my marathon I always played as mage.

Only to discover not only vodoo is weak but completely useless, investing in melee and dirty tricks is useless against monsters and Musket turn the player into god.

they have gimmicky shit of voddoo, monkeys, parrots, silver tongue and Intimidate only to know they just gimmick completely useless and unnecessary and you can do all 99% quest without them.

I managed to reach to Maracai Bay by playing 10 mins daily but I give up.
I guess I'm not going to play Risen 3 which I heard is far better than two but I can't, the game is too shit for me to handle.


Why PB created this shit ?? I would loved the same mechanic of the first Risen but with better graphic.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Why PB created this shit ??

Because barely any of the original Risen (and much less original Gothic) devs are still on board.

 

[Supermedo]

Why PB created this shit ??

Because barely any of the original Risen (and much less original Gothic) devs are still on board.

Fuck!, why did they all jump the ship ? did they start a new company or something ?

 

[imweasel]

I guess I'm not going to play Risen 3 which I heard is far better than two but I can't, the game is too shit for me to handle.

Not really. Same shit just with a dash of Skyrim. The only major difference is that the pirate theme was toned down slightly in R3.

 

[Tigranes]

If you hate R2 to death you probably won't enjoy R3.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I would loved the same mechanic of the first Risen but with better graphic.

We all do but this is what we got.
And yeah, if you hated 2 you are going to hate 3 too. They are mostly same, 3 has more magic in it and wider areas.

 

[Lord Andre]

Risen 2 was indeed shit but at least it didn't have a fucking retarded cutscene every fucking 10 minutes like Witcher 2 and the inventory by comparison is manageable.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I'm not a fan of Witcher 2 but its still light years better than Risen2 as an RPG.

 

[adddeed]

I played Risen 2 recently and greatly enjoyed it. Much more than i did The Witcher 2.

 

[Cadmus]

I played Risen 2 recently and greatly enjoyed it. Much more than i did The Witcher 2.

more proof that Risen 2 is total shit

 

[NotAGolfer]

... or how the melee combat is shit which is to be expected from PB games, the nearest thing they got to a good melee combat was in the first Risen.

Stopped reading there.

 

[Supermedo]

^
Gee, I hope you don't tell me that Gothic 2 had a better melee combat over Risen.

I probably going to drop Risen 2 completely, the story ain't worth it.

 

[NotAGolfer]

^
Gee, I hope you don't tell me that Gothic 2 had a better melee combat over Risen.

No, I just informed you that you are a gigantic faggit, nothing more, nothing less.

On a more serious note, what is wrong with you the combat in Gothic and Gothic 2?
Why do some people here keep repeating this over and over? ARPGs don't get much more hardcore than the Gothics (maybe DS, but I still have to play that one) and if you can't figure out the control scheme or think that it is inconvenient then you simply didn't give it enough time or maybe are just too dumb incapable to adapt to new things (which is pretty much the definition of dumb).
Also the Gothics had pretty much the same combat like Risen, maybe a little more unforgiving (animals not blockable f.i.)

I probably going to drop Risen 2 completely, the story ain't worth it.

This is a PB game, of course the story is shit. What did you expect?

 

[msxyz]

Why PB created this shit ??

Because barely any of the original Risen (and much less original Gothic) devs are still on board.

Fuck!, why did they all jump the ship ? did they start a new company or something ?

I'd love to know this as well. Where did they go?

 

[Supermedo]

I never talked about Gothic being hard or control is inconvenient but let's get this straight PB never hard a good MELEE COMBAT compared to Mount & Blade , Severance: Blade of Darkness and Dark souls.
just check the cgamplay footage for each one of them and tell me Gothic 1 - 3 have good Melee combat.

 

[NotAGolfer]

As you wish:
Gothic 1 and 2 have good melee combat.
Dark Souls and Mount&Blade might be better in that regard but at least the latter has other deficiencies that make it a far worse CRPG (I'm not sure that it even tries to be one).

The Gothics have decent combat far superior to most ARPGs out there with:
a gameworld that isn't levelscaled, higher level enemies that can onehit you even far into the game
a rewarding skill progession where learning new abilities unlocks new content and opens up the world
a loot and equipment progression that is tied to the rest of the RPG systems (unlike every single pure open world CRPG out there)
distinct enemy behaviors and enemy groups actually ganging up on you so you could't just jump into the middle of them and shout "boooyah!"
and so on, these games are ARPGs done right.

 

[Supermedo]

As you wish:
Gothic 1 and 2 have good melee combat.
Dark Souls and Mount&Blade might be better in that regard but at least the latter has other deficiencies that make it a far worse CRPG (I'm not sure that it even tries to be one).

The Gothics have decent combat far superior to most ARPGs out there with:
a gameworld that isn't levelscaled, higher level enemies that can onehit you even far into the game
a rewarding skill progession where learning new abilities unlocks new content and opens up the world
a loot and equipment progression that is tied to the rest of the RPG systems (unlike every single pure open world CRPG out there)
distinct enemy behaviors and enemy groups actually ganging up on you so you could't just jump into the middle of them and shout "boooyah!"
and so on, these games are ARPGs done right.

Of course that why I love Gothic series in general, Gothic one is my best game of all time, I was only just commenting on melee aspect else.
which why I'm sad how Risen 2 dropped all these elements you mentioned and gave us Risen 2 the abomination .

 

[Mastermind]

As you wish:
Gothic 1 and 2 have good melee combat.
Dark Souls and Mount&Blade might be better in that regard but at least the latter has other deficiencies that make it a far worse CRPG (I'm not sure that it even tries to be one).

The Gothics have decent combat far superior to most ARPGs out there with:
a gameworld that isn't levelscaled, higher level enemies that can onehit you even far into the game
a rewarding skill progession where learning new abilities unlocks new content and opens up the world
a loot and equipment progression that is tied to the rest of the RPG systems (unlike every single pure open world CRPG out there)
distinct enemy behaviors and enemy groups actually ganging up on you so you could't just jump into the middle of them and shout "boooyah!"
and so on, these games are ARPGs done right.

What it didn't have (and what is the bare minimum for combat to not be complete shit) was responsive controls. I would press the buttons and nothing awesome happened. Playing and understanding what makes the combat good in jedi knight/jedi academy should be mandatory for any developer who wants to make a third person arpg.

 

[Morkar Left]

What it didn't have (and what is the bare minimum for combat to not be complete shit) was responsive controls.

Gothic 1 and 2 had responsive controls. You only had to understand that you need some rythm in your attacks to make them fluent. And it was depending on the skill level of the nameless hero of course.
Gothic 3 had laggy controls because of poor optimization and the attack animations as such were awkward for a combat system, even if looked realistic. Forward steps in the standard attack wasn't a good decision and the stunblocking of course. In the latest cp it works surprisingly well. Again, if you know what you're doing.

 

[adddeed]

I'm playing Gothic 1 at the moment, and the combat takes some getting used to but it's actually not bad at all. Risen did it best of course.

 

[cvv]

I'm replaying Risen 2 right now, as part of my PB marathon, and my two cents are thus:

It's not a bad game, roughly in the Witcher 2 territory: competent, mildly entertaining console RPG. The problem is not the game itself but how much of a decline it is compared to Risen 1, let alone Gothic 3.

The idiotic common "wisdom", displayed all over Codex as well, usually claims Risen 2 has horrible melee combat, terrible writing, useless magic, looks and sounds bad and is short. All this is completely wrong.

Risen 2 looks absolutely fucking gorgeous (maybe except for the lighting, the jungle is either too dark or too bright), sounds pretty normal and is definitely not short (Gothic 3 is longer and maybe G2 with NotR). As for the combat and writing, that's...complicated. Melee combat has its problems but in a properly patched game it's definitely not terrible. My main beef is that compared to R1 it's faster, to cater to the console twitch crowd, so some of the enemy animations and behaviour looks cartoonish. Also parry&riposte are idiotically hard to time. And the imbecile rolling instead of an elegant sidestepping is another annoyance (still, not having any dodge in the vanilla was even more imbecillic). And writing...well, it's a PB game so the overall plot is obviously retarded but otherwise the writing is pretty good, had a few LOL moments which for me is pretty rare in a videogame.

And as for the magic - yeah, no. I mean, useless? Really? How far in the voodoo path have you gone, Supermedo? Because for my high-level voodoo char, from roughly half-way through on, the game is basically an easy mode. Sorry bro, it seems you just don't know how to use it. I'd even go as far as to say it's by far the best magic system PB has ever devised. Or, more precisely, the least bad. Compared to previous games you have no DD spells, only the CC ones. So you can fear mobs, turn them against each other, curse them and when all fails, you can summon a ghost which is a complete faceroll machine, if your Death Cult skill is high enough.

***

No ladies and gentlemen, the real problems of R2 are very different. Let's start with the atmosphere. The main attraction of all PB games was always the setting and general atmosphere. This is completely gone in R2. Instead of a moody, "realistic", "European medieval" setting we have an American theme park of a game, half Pirates of the Caribbean, half AC: Black Flag, complete with comic relief characters. Sometimes the similarities with Black Flag were almost eery. The result is Risen 2 feels much more like an adventure or an action-adventure game than an epic, full-scale, dyed-in-the-wool RPG we learned to expect from PB. It's not as pronounced in the first two initial islands, which are still relatively big, combaty and explore-friendly, but from Antigua on I almost felt like playing a next-gen Monkey Island game, what with all the inventory and NPC shenanigans.

A related issue is the lack of an open world. Gothic 3, which I played a few weeks ago, is the most glorious open world setting I've ever seen. From the get-go you could go almost anywhere, talk to almost anyone. Risen 2 is basically an Assassin's Creed type of game, with chapters, progessing stories, cutscenes and so on. Disgusting. THIS is the real reason people got so pissed off with it. It's just not a PB game anymore, it's a Deep Silver console game.

Minor problems - the firearms are idiotically overpowered. I mean ranged combat has always been a god mode in a PB game but here it's bad to the point you're seriouly thinking if it was actually designed by a genuine autist. Next - PB botched the chests mechanics. Again. You'd probably think that a chest requiring 90 lockpick skill (very hard to achieve) will give you much more awesome loot than a chest requiring 20 lockpick. Ah-ha! Not in a PB game it doesn't! So you can find a legendary in the latter and a few coins, bottle of grog and few bullets in the former (which you do more often than not) Yeah...I mean what's with PB and their incompetence with designing loot?

Also, the running speed is too low, the character is probably a heavy smoker because he can't spring further than a few meters, you can't make map markings so when you find a difficult chest somewhere in the jungle and didn't note down it's precise location you'd probably never find it again and crafting is completely pointless because almost everything is easier to find or cheaper to buy.

I'm still playing though, gonna finish it despite everything. And I'm actually looking fwd to see how they've improved, or not, on the formula in Risen 3 (I know, I've read the threads, but I wanna see myself).

 

[aleph]

I'm replaying Risen 2 right now, as part of my PB marathon, and my two cents are thus:

It's not a bad game, roughly in the Witcher 2 territory: ...

Also, if you want to talk about easy in Risen 2, play it with a musket. Magic is hard mode compared to that.

 

[cvv]

^You got any argument with that emote?

 

[aleph]

^You got any argument with that emote?

If you got to ask then no...

 

[Darth Roxor]

half AC: Black Flag, complete with comic relief characters. Sometimes the similarities with Black Flag were almost eery.

yes

i'm sure risen 2 was based a lot on a game that came out a year after it